London Northwestern and West Midlands Railway services return to public ownership
posted on 1st Feb 2026 08:24
Half of all rail journeys that Great British Railways will ultimately be responsible for will be on services run by publicly owned operators from 1 February 2026, as London Northwestern and West Midlands Railway services join the fast-growing family of operators owned by the public. The milestone marks a further step towards creating an integrated rail network.
This brings the two sides of the West Midlands Trains (WMT) business under public ownership: London Northwestern, which operates services between Liverpool and Birmingham and along the West Coast Main Line to and from London Euston, and West Midlands Railway, which serves destinations across the West Midlands via Birmingham New Street and Birmingham Snow Hill.
WMT is the fourth operator to enter public ownership under the government’s Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act, marking another step towards more unified railway under Great British Railways (GBR) and coinciding with the government’s decision to freeze rail fares for the first time in 30 years.
Ian McConnell, Managing Director of West Midlands Trains, said: “We are proud to be one of the fastest-growing train operators in the country with millions of passengers travelling on London Northwestern Railway (LNR) and West Midlands Railway (WMR) services every month. We’ve introduced more than 100 new trains as well as upgrading our depots and station facilities. We’re looking forward to opening five brand new stations later this year and we’re also rolling out ‘Pay-As-You-Go’ ticketing across 75 locations to enable seamless tap-in, tap-out travel for our customers.
Publicly owned operator South Western Railway has also quadrupled the number of new trains in service since entering public ownership, offering more comfortable journeys, and passengers can now use tickets across publicly owned operators during cancellations -at no extra cost. Meanwhile, Northern is planning for the future by introducing state-of-the-art simulators to accelerate driver training programmes and are planning their largest ever fleet investment, with up to 450 new trains."
West Midlands Trains joins Greater Anglia, c2c, Northern, TransPennine Express, Southeastern, LNER and South Western Railway which are currently managed by DfT Operator Limited (DFTO). Govia Thameslink Railway’s (GTR) services will be next to transfer on 31 May 2026. Chiltern Railways and Great Western Railways services are then expected to follow, with the Secretary of State for Transport due to make final decisions on when exactly this will happen in due course. We expect the full public ownership programme to be completed by the end of 2027. With the transfer of West Midlands Trains, 8 out of 14 passenger train operating companies that will run under GBR are now in public ownership.